Since I have run for public office five times in nine years and lost by a
wide margin each time, I am what is known in the trade as a “perennial
candidate”. That is not a flattering term. It seems that I am someone
whose ego outstrips his capabilities. I have completely lost touch with reality
if I think I can win an election for U.S. Senate or President of the United
States. I am thought to be either a fool or a madman.

Actually,
that may be overstating the case. No, if I run for high office against
extremely long
odds, I do not necessarily expect to win the election.
I am therefore not deluding myself. I am running for reasons other than
winning the election. I am sane.

Living
in Minnesota, I had a chance to meet the archetypal “perennial
candidate”: Harold Stassen. Stassen, as we know, ran for President
many times with little chance of winning after his career as a presidential
prospect peaked in 1948. People laughed at him. But actually his accomplishments
were greater than those of most Presidents. Stassen had one big dream:
the United Nations. He was one of a handful of persons most responsible
for creating
that organization. We respect signers of the Declaration of Independence
or of the U.S. Constitution. We should also respect Harold Stassen, signer
of the UN Charter. Stassen repeatedly ran for office because, he said,
he continued to have something to say.

There
was another man whom I would not have met had he not run for office past
his political prime. He was
former U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy.
I met McCarthy in 1982 when he came back to Minnesota to run in the
DFL primary
for the Senate. McCarthy lost the primary to Mark Dayton but,
thanks to a common interest in the shorter-workweek issue, I became his
friend.
I respect McCarthy even though he was a “perennial candidate”.
It was part of his character to run for office against long odds and
champion unpopular causes. I admire Eugene McCarthy for that.

Well-intentioned
people sometimes advise me to run for a more realistic office. Since
the office of dog catcher does
not exist, how about state representative, City Council, or the Park
Board? How about running as a Democrat or Republican rather than
as a third-party
candidate? Rather than being a Don Quixote tilting at impossible
challenges, I might then actually win something. I know a woman
who was
a perennial candidate who kept losing until she ran for the office
of Ramsey
County Conservation
District commissioner and then started winning elections. Why not
follow her example?

One
reason is that I hate sitting through long meetings. I might
not want to win the election if I ran for a more “realistic” office.
I might then feel morally committed to serving out my term. Holding
public office does have its disadvantages. You have to pay attention
to the boring
details of public administration and endure sometimes senseless
criticism from constituents without necessarily having the power to accomplish
what you wanted to do.

If
I imagine myself being elected, for instance, to the U.S. Senate, I would
be one of one hundred Senators a majority
of whom would
be needed
to pass a bill. Then we would need a majority of those in the
House of Representatives to send a bill passed by both houses to the
President, and we would need
the President’s signature for the bill to become law. It’s
not that I alone would have much power.

Also,
if I were a Democrat or a Republican serving in Congress, I
would be part of a system corrupted by special-interest
influence.
I would
need lots of money for my re-election campaign and, to raise
this money, I would effectively have to sell
my vote
to
the people
who funded my campaign. Since it is mainly powerful interest
groups who fund
political candidates, I would have to be a defender of the
status quo if I wanted to win elections.
What if I ran to
be an
agent of change - someone who would challenge this corrupt
system? Probably I
wouldn’t win.

So
that’s why winning elections is
not all that it’s cracked
up to be. Sure, I would have immediate access to power. I
would earn a salary much larger than what I had before.
After holding public office, I could
make a killing as a lobbyist. My financial worries would
be a thing of the past. But I am idealist who is against
that
sort of thing. I want to improve
society, not milk it. In today’s political environment,
there's a contradiction between being an idealist and
winning elections.

When
I ran for President in 2003, a journalist in Pittsburgh wrote of me: “Some
goof with too much money and time to waste is seeking the
Democrats’ nomination
for president in 2004. Not Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt,
John Edwards, John Kerry ..... Try Bill McGaughey of Minneapolis.
Never heard of him? Too bad.
According to his nifty packet of campaign literature, which
somehow found its way to Pittsburgh, he’s overqualified
... McGaughey’s photo
looks OK. No antennae are visible. If you’d like
to join his presidential crusade, he’ll be marching
in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, today.”

I
suppose from the standpoint of a newspaper political writer, it’s
irritating to have someone run for office without a serious
chance of winning. Journalists cover candidates because
one of them might win and become
part of the government. Does that make me a “goof”?
Am I wasting the reporter’s time in running for
office? That’s up to him or
her to answer; but I would say that there is a serious
side to my electoral venture. Let
me try to explain.

We
start with the premise that our politics is broken.
Americans are demoralized as their leaders routinely
betray the public
interest. The options
for someone wanting to challenge that system are limited.
Most become armchair critics of the system who sit
back and complain.
They are
effectively immobilized.
It’s just not worth the effort to swim against
the current, most people think.

Rather
than becoming cynical or passive-aggressive, I prefer to act. Whatever
the outcome, one gains a
sense
of self-respect by
taking the initiative. I believe that each citizen
of the United States has at least one way to act effectively:
to speak
from personal
belief or experience
in
endeavoring to tell the truth. To tell a personal
story
is powerful. It may not have an immediate effect
but, if enough
people begin
saying what they believe to be the truth, public
opinion will change. That is the root cause of political
change.

I
believe, therefore, that the most important change takes place out here,
among the people, rather than in
government.
We change
public
opinion more by being among the public than by
holding elective office. So, if it
is real change that we want (and not just changes
in the holders of offices), the best opportunity
comes
when we
are
talking with
people and
sharing our respective points of view. That’s
what candidates do in campaigns. That's why the
process
of campaigning
is itself contributing to the process of change
even if a candidate does not win the election.

Now,
of course, people can speak out effectively without
running for elective office. But running
for office
gives someone a
platform. It
puts the candidates
in a role that others can understand. The candidate
is supposed to be talking about issues affecting
the larger
society.
And because there is always
a chance that he or she might win, people take
those conversations more
seriously.
Political candidates assume an instant identity
that makes it legitimate for them to be talking
about
the larger questions. A further
advantage is that the election has a distinct
cutoff point after which candidates
can return to their previous lives.
They can run for office and then
do other things. The burdens of campaigning can
suddenly be dropped.

Thus,
when I become a political candidate, I assume a clear set of tasks. My
purposes are
clear.
I try
to get as
many votes
as I can
during
the period
of campaigning. I can pace myself and use
strategy. It becomes like a game. Games are fun and so
is campaigning for public
office. I become
immersed
in
the experience and am part of my community.
The experience can be exhausting; but isn’t that what life is supposed
to be? Winning isn’t everything.

There
is another reason that I run for public office.
I am a writer. I like to develop ideas.
Part of
this process
involves
putting
the ideas on paper.
However, the process is incomplete unless
others read what the
writer has
written and provide useful feedback. Elections
to public office create such a mechanism for
feedback to
be received.
As poets need
poetry readings
to
present their
works to a real audience, so people with
political and social ideas need election campaigns to
communicate their views
to people on various subjects. It fulfills
the writing process.

Win
or lose, political candidates know where they stand once the voters have
spoken. Where
else would
one find
such feedback?
Gradually,
the writer-candidate changes his views
to become more realistic. The candidate becomes familiar with attitudes
among
the public and has
a better sense
of what people will accept. Losing campaigns
provide
that lesson as well as winning ones. As
a person of ideas,
one becomes
less isolated
in one’s
views.

I
would have to say, however, that over the years I have become less interested
in the
ideas and
more interested
in
the experience. There is a unique story
to tell in each
campaign. I have come to realize that
I have a strong interest
in story telling. If I run a political
campaign by myself, I know all the
details of the campaign. From recollections
of the experience, I can
craft a story. I become an
observant artist as well as a participant
in the campaign.

When
I ran for President in the Louisiana
Democratic primary, the story was about
visiting a new
state and seeing the sights. I wrote
a book, “On
the Ballot in Louisiana”, which
was a kind of travelogue about the
places I visited. The campaign required
driving
all over the state to visit
newspaper offices. I was a tourist
with a license to talk with busy
newspaper editors. Today, I remember
pre-Katrina Louisiana as an almost
magical place where I
once was.

When,
for instance,
the 9th ward went under water I could relate personally
to
that part of
New Orleans that was
across the
canal. I could remember
following a hand-drawn map sketched
by the editor of
the St. Bernard Voice showing
me what streets to take from Arabi
to my next appointment on the other
side
of downtown. (It cut my drive time
by at least half.) I remember the
afternoon
traffic while
crossing the river on St. Claude
street, which then becomes Rampart street, near
where I parked for
the Mardi
Gras parade.

When
I recently ran for Congress in Minnesota’s 5th district
and then for Mayor of Minneapolis,
the experiences were different. There was a single newspaper with
political dominance and I was already
familiar with the terrain. Here
the story had to do with particular challenges: How might my Congressional
campaign take advantage of the Republican National
Convention? In the mayor’s
race, how would my role as a landlord
activist relate to my candidacy?
Would Ranked Choice Voting have
a impact on
the election?

In
the two local campaigns, I also
interacted more with the other
candidates. There
were
alliances and fronts of opposition.
As always, there was the problem
of attracting media coverage.
The streets and neighborhoods
where I visited
store keepers
or
distributed literature
assumed a certain personality
as cities and towns had done in the
Louisiana
campaign.

Unlike
most other political candidates, I followed up each campaign by
writing a
story while
the events were
fresh
in my mind.
I tried to
put as much
personal detail as I could
into the story so readers would
have
an immediate
sense of the campaign.
To date, I have told the stories
of two campaigns are told in published
books (later put
on the Internet)
and another two
campaigns have stories
on websites used by the
campaign itself. There is a
book-length manuscript for
each campaign.

Now
I understand that if I am running for public office
to
create stories,
political reporters would
have a right to become angry. I would
not
be a “serious” candidate,
who had a real chance
of winning,
but a “goof
off” who was doing
this for his own amusement.
Being mocked would then
come with
the territory.
That is the price of admission
to
this game.

But
there again, my prospective critics may
be overstating
their case.
As I said,
I run
for public office
to
bring about
change. I want to
be an active rather than
passive citizen in the
face of government
abuse. When
I talk to
voters
during
the campaign
or when people
read my written account
of the campaign,
I provide
political
communication that conceivably
might affect public opinion.

I
would love to have others
doing the same thing, whether
they are “perennial” or
merely occasional candidates.
If we had many people
speaking out on subjects
of community interest,
it would create a culture
of open expression.
It would give still others
the courage
also to speak their mind.
We sorely need a culture
of open
political expression,
with people fearlessly
speaking
their mind, if only to
encourage the timid ones
among us to take courage
from
that act. Then large
numbers of voters will
appear at the voting
booths to cast their
ballots.
Once the feeling
of hopelessness is dispelled,
Americans
can take back their government.